Potable, portable water has become an increasingly sought-after and commonplace commodity by modern day consumers. Whether natural spring water or purified and/or re-mineralized drinking water, to address varying consumer demands for convenience and availability, water vendors have developed a number of bottle sizes and approaches for dispensing and delivering water. One such approach described more fully below uses established food stores, e.g., supermarkets and wholesale establishments, within which bottled water in varying sizes is offered on store shelves. A second approach is to offer larger 3 and 5 gallon bottles, often stacked independently of the market's shelves due to their considerable weight, which are to be used with water coolers for dispensing.
For companies involved in the home and office water delivery business, competition with respect to price, service, contract terms, availability of product, consistency of product, permitting in and out of state, delivery expenses including the acquisition of, or lease of, government approved trucks, fuel costs, tolls, taxes, maintenance and repair, labor and labor related benefits all add considerably to the cost of the delivered water. Additional costs such as a sales force, bookkeeping department, plant inventory, delivered inventory, truck-loaded inventory, FIFO handling of product inventory, further add to the cost. Regional weather issues can affect deliveries to homes, offices and apartment buildings.
An additional problem is the use of rented water coolers. Companies providing on-site delivery services that rent coolers to their customers have to deal with repair and maintenance, cleaning, billing and collection of rental fees.
A yet further set of issues with respect to the home/office delivery business concerns state permitting practices and procedures. States vary considerably in their permitting requirements such that one company may decide against doing business in certain states to avoid disparate permitting requirements.
Distribution of particular brands of water for home/office delivery may be further restricted by geographical considerations, such as distance from a bottling facility. Many homes and businesses may be outside the feasible mileage radius of the bottling plant to warrant delivery at a competitive or acceptable price. The end result is the delivery of bottles and coolers along with all the related costs creates a fractionalized cost model that requires high volume to achieve low margins.
Similar problems surface with the distribution of 3 and 5 gallon bottles through supermarket and wholesale club stores. “Centralizing” distribution does centralize costs and simplify bottle delivery and empty bottle pickup. It also reduces or eliminates many of the other problems associated with home/office delivery. Problems such as billing and collection, however, still remain, even though on a centralized, e.g., consolidated manner, the bottler is invoicing the supermarket and wholesale stores versus invoicing the individual home and/or office customers. One solution to the invoicing issue is to rely on the retailer to electronically transfer funds directly and automatically. This has become increasingly popular with the advent of e-commerce.
In this particular model of distribution, the customers serve themselves and prepay for the bottled water product at a central location versus being invoiced separately at dispersed locations for the delivered purchase and/or cooler rental. In most cases, the customer will also be required to prepay for the bottle when purchased. Furthermore in this distribution model, the particular retailer and not the customer governs the location and hours of operation. As an added difficulty/inconvenience, the customer must handle the product in order to get the 3 and/or 5 gallon bottle to their vehicle from inside the store while often simultaneously shopping for other items inside the store (depending upon whether it's a grocer or retailer, this can be a significant limitation). And often times, this will result in a separate trip back and forth to the vehicle and back and forth to customer service to return empties, and in some cases, to receive a voucher to present to a cashier as a credit against the purchase of a new bottled water product and then out to the vehicle (or continue to shop inside the store before travelling back to the vehicle). This can have the unfortunate effect of limiting sales and causing probable inconvenience.
This model of distribution has significant temporal and convenience limitations as it relies entirely on the individual store hours and on the location(s) of the stores. A further inconvenience and limitation is the location(s) inside those stores where bottles are returned and where bottles are purchased and retrieved. Added to this is the common practice of using vouchers to confirm bottle returns for a return-bottle credit, which, if lost, cannot be used to obtain a credit against a subsequent purchase of a filled bottle.
A substantial reason why water bottles are sold in stores is due to the effect of climate and weather on water. If left exposed to the elements—even in sealed containers—water can freeze, get stolen, and/or overheat. In the alternative, even if the bottled water were to be stacked outside the store on the sidewalk (so to speak) for purchase, it would have to be brought back into the store at closing to reduce the risk of theft and to prevent freezing in colder climates. By way of example, there can be as many as 75-100 bottles stacked on the shelves of wholesale clubs. If not left inside the store, but displayed for sale outside, the bottles would need to be taken in each and every night. It should come as no surprise that water bottles sold by wholesale clubs are more likely to sell the bottles from store racks/shelves inside the club facilities.
Not only does this model create extra effort and handling for the customer, just as importantly, it places a constant burden on the retailer as it can involve the ongoing and tedious tasks of price-labeling, of handling the piles of empties and of planning the use of valuable floor/shelf space in designated “water aisles” such as those found in a supermarket or a Wal-Mart store. The same burden is experienced when the bottles are placed on separate shelving or pallets in retail stores such as Home Depot, or Lowe's, or in food clubs such as B.J.'s Wholesale Club, Sam's Club, Costco, etc. These problems are exacerbated by the fact that these self-serve products weigh about 44.5 lbs. per five gallon bottle and about 25.5 lbs. per 3 gallon bottle. This creates significant handling logistics for both the consumer and the store. For example, a 5 gallon bottle typically takes up an 8″D-10½″ D×13″H space for a 3 gallon bottle and an 11″D×20″H space for a 5 gallon bottle. Sales of, and even profits derived from, this product can sometimes be negated by the extra handling and “shelf-space” required.
Several other problems involving this distribution model are not readily apparent. For example, in the case of a grocery store, the customer must carry the 45 lb. and/or 25 lb. bottles around the store in a grocery cart, wait in line for a check-out clerk and then bring the bottle out to his or her vehicle sometimes in snow, ice or rainy weather conditions and across a parking lot to their parking space which could be several hundred feet or yards away. This scenario repeats itself in the wholesale and retail stores and only worsens because the customer must park their car; bring any empties to the “customer service area” to redeem their deposit(s) and get a receipt; go to the cashier (wait in another line); pay for a new bottle(s) of water; go to the location where the 3's and 5's are kept; pick them up and place them in a basket carrier and then wheel them out to their vehicle, much the same as in the supermarket model. This is not the most customer friendly or convenient delivery model and again can stifle sales because many, if not most, shoppers at supermarkets are consumers doing their weekly shopping. In this scenario, buying drinking water in large quantities is not necessarily a “destination”, or convenient purchase.”
In an improved form of distribution, 3 and 5 gallon bottled water can be distributed in a vending machine designed to handle both 3's and 5's of bottled water and 3's and 5's of empty returns. This is accomplished using a single piece of equipment in one location only, located outside the retailer's store on a sidewalk, “end-cap”, or some other similar, customer friendly location where customers can drive up, buy and return their bottles (24/7) and be on their way, or to shop if they choose, and then purchase their water on the way out of the store.
In this novel distribution system, customers aren't reliant on retailer's hours of operation; both the bottle return and the purchase of the product are in the same machine; customers are guaranteed an FDA and Board of Health approved product “packaged” and not delivered “bulk.” Customers don't have to bring their own “clean and sanitary” containers. The system is a cashless transaction which should help, if not eliminate theft because the vendor is an unmanned unit 24/7. It further provides a convenient method of payment for the consumer because they can utilize one of three or four methods of payment. If cash is preferable, the system can accept a prepaid water card, which can be purchased from the retailer. This method of payment is also compatible with retailers' cross-promotions whereas they can receive discounts off their purchase by using special retailer coupons and/or retailer “advantage” cards.
The vending apparatus is very well lighted and safe in appearance and customer-friendly to operate. The only trucking required is “on demand” because the unit is wireless and will communicate with the manufacturer's/dispatch control center when the vending apparatus is low on inventory. A “return bottle” well/window is a vendor controlled RFID or a bar coded Unique Identification Number (UID) acceptable only to that bottler's product bottles for the amount paid when first purchased. Many unnecessary and unwanted business expenses and inconveniences are now eliminated with the present disclosure. The apparatus includes clear, multilingual signage to assist customers with their purchases unlike the other models of distribution. There is no bookkeeping to speak of as the system is wireless and automated for all parties concerned. The size and shape of the vendor machine is expandable or contractible and will be dependent on the location, and re-fill delivery costs.
There are no building permits or other special permits/license fees required unlike some other types of vending and distribution systems as the vending apparatus is NAMA and U/L pre-approved before placement at their retail location(s). There are hundreds of various models and types of vending machines but almost all of those machines and kiosks that sell “packaged/bottled” water or soft drinks are “small pack” sizes and do not address the larger 3 and 5 gallon size. All other water vending machines are either “unpackaged” bulk water vending machines that require the customer to bring their own “clean, sanitary containers”. These machines are heavily regulated on an individual location basis requiring, in many cases, both local and state permits and licenses from boards of health, plumbing, building and wiring inspectors as well as local water quality agencies such as the California Department of Health; the Rhode Island Board of Health; the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP); the New York Department of Health; the Massachusetts Board of Health; the Licensing Board of Certified Operators; just to name a few. The disclosed vending apparatus eliminates these requirements because all necessary permitting issues are already in effect before the product is loaded into the truck to deliver to the vending apparatuses at their retail location(s).
In both of the known self-service vending systems, the “Return Bottle” area is located generally in a customer service area located as one enters the retail store where the “return” is either put in a designated “Return Bottle Area” (loose and unconstrained) or in a “Return Bottle” enclosed compartment that accepts all bottles from all vendors and prints a “refund” slip to be cashed in when purchasing a new filled bottle at a location elsewhere in the store. It is then the customer's chore to push a grocery art with their bottled water which can weigh as little as 25 lbs per 3 gallon bottle or as much as 45 lbs for a 5 gallon bottle and more, depending on the number of bottles purchased, out to their vehicle located some distance from the store exit. The disclosed vending apparatus eliminates these inconveniences and problems as well.